PODCAST 9 – STAR COPS
Occasionally you find that
there’s something that you really quite fancy watching, and find that you never bothered
picking it up on DVD because you already owned it on VHS. Then, rather
typically, you discover that the DVD release that you once so brutally shunned
has now been deleted and can only be got hold of second-hand and at vastly
inflated prices.
Granted, that’s market forces
for you and, whilst you can’t buy everything, sometimes it is better to strike
while the iron is at least lukewarm, and so on and so on. Sometimes, you just
have to accept that you have, unfortunately, missed out.
So it was with “STAR COPS” –
a show that I suddenly fancied having another look at when it was announced
that the Audio Production Company “Big Finish” were planning on giving it a
revisit thirty odd years down the line.
Anyway, after having a bit of
an old rummage in the boxes, it turned out that I hadn’t chucked out those old
tapes and, with a little bit of further rummaging, and a certain amount of
jiggery-pokery with the TV set - knowing from the outset that “it won’t be
easy” - I was able to dust off the old video recorder, plumb it in, and have a
quick shufti at the opening episode – “An Instinct For Murder”.
Justin Heywood’s opening
theme is a piece of music that’s come in for a lot of criticism down those
three decades, but, strangely, I found it rather appealing in a nostalgic way
when it kicked in straight away from those pre-pre-credit sequence times.
Episode one divides its time
about fifty-fifty between earth and space in order to provide our hero, one
Chief Superintendent Nathan Spring – as played by that very fine actor David
Calder who, as a balding middle-aged man is not exactly your usual leading man
in an action series – with a backstory grounded very securely on earth, reduce
the need for potentially shonky special effects, show off what a damn fine
copper he is to audiences more used to, for example, the “Bergerac” style of
policing.
This also means that the same
potential audience who might find any sci-fi trappings in their telly series a
big turn off might – potentially – get drawn into the story before they realize
that that’s what it is.
This was, after all, the late
1980s and viewers in the late 1980s really REALLY hated science-fiction,
donchaknow? Cinema box office receipts at the time might have proved otherwise,
but who were we to argue with massively paid TV Executives who probably barely
watched any telly themselves.
Anyway, this splitting of the
storyline also means that, apart from Nathan and his soon to be sidekick David
Theroux, as played by Erick Ray Evans, you get to see very little of the other
Star Cops in this particular episode.
Linda Newton’s character Pal
Kensy does get a cough and a spit via a video monitor, but, perhaps rather
cleverly, we are being slowly introduced to our gang in much the same way as
Nathan is.
And so, the episode tells the
story of two crimes. A deliberate drowning of a man in a lake on earth by two
frogmen is paralleled by the murder of a space-suited man by two space-suited
assassins. The cross-cutting between the murders emphasizes the link still
further – these two crimes, in two different worlds are very similar.
Get it? Got it? Good. We know
where we are.
Mind you, any programme that
starts with some filming of some ducks gets my vote right off the bat.
It loses them immediately,
however, thanks to the mustard bathrobe and – Yike! – a terrifying pair of swimming
trunks.
And so, on earth, a body is
found in a duck pond and whilst this might be a job for the fashion police, it
is handed over to one Nathan Spring in his non unsurprisingly temporary looking
office which is dominated by one vast voice-controlled television screen, which
you can shout at to make it rewind and play.
Which makes it handy for
those boring crimeless afternoons down at the station, I suppose.
We immediately find out just
what kind of detective Nathan Spring is when he demands of his subordinate
Brian Lincoln (played by Andrew Secombe – WhatwhatwhatwhatWHAT?) that instead
of trusting to the probabilities of the machines – which have already decided
that this was an accident – he should investigate it properly by asking
important questions like “Where did he drown?”
Meanwhile, up in space we
discover that David Theroux is a similarly awkward kind of a copper, too. He’s
an American, because they’re a pretty international bunch floating up out there
in their simple one-piece blue space overalls, making for a cheap – and yet
surprisingly authentic looking – uniform and saving hugely on the costuming
budget.
Despite the boredom of his
job meaning that David’s floating around and playing far too many quiz question
games with his friendly neighbourhood traffic controller, he’s decided that the
accidental deaths put down to suit failure are happening far too often and, via
a comms link cynical chat with the notorious gambler – and Australian - Officer
“Pal” Kensy, we find out about the death rates being down, but constant, and
within acceptable safety margins, which, in this cold, calculating,
computerized society, means that he has to remind them all that they still lose
people.
There’s also some chat – Plot
seeding alert! – about the vacant commander’s position, and about how Kensy - Plot
seeding alert! – really needs the extra money they’d pay, before we return to
the mundane ritual of communicating with Euroshuttle Seven just in case we’ve
forgotten that we’re up in space.
On earth, Nathan’s commander
is played by one very class act, Moray Watson, more than thirty years on from
his appearance in the original version of “The Quatermass Experiment”. The
Commander – strangely unnamed on the final credits – tells Nathan that there’s
“No evidence” of a murder and that the computers have predictably ruled the
incident to be an accident.
Nathan signs off with a
cheery mutter of “Bastard!” – just to show us what kind of copper he is - and
we get our first glimpse of “Box”, Nathan’s far-too-expensive and
state-of-the-art version of Siri, or Lexa, or whatever, which is also voiced by
David Calder in a strangely narcissistic twist, and is able to do clever ORAC-y
things like book dreadful restaurants for Nathan and his girlfriend Lee to eat
in.
Lee, when we meet her, seems
rather nice, in a “being a bit like 1980s Barbara Flynn but probably slightly
cheaper” way, but, I ought to warn you that – because Nathan needs to have no
ties to earth later on in the series - she’s someone who we won’t want to be
getting too fond of.
It won’t be easy without her
(No, no).
Anyway, Nathan’s persistence
leads to a personal telling off by Commander Moray who claims not to back
hunches and has a video mood wall tuned to his brainwaves so that people can
tell he really means it when he’s telling them off.
Much future-times policework,
it seems, is subject to assessment by the Accounts Committee who still think
that the murder was an accident and Nathan is told to go on leave, and it is
strongly suggested that he ought to try very, very hard to get the ISPF job
that he reluctantly applied for to get out of the niche he’s settled himself
into.
Plot seeding alert!
It turns out that, despite
really not wanting the job, he’s made the shortlist and, as the only Brit left
in the race, Moray won’t let him withdraw his name, making suggestions that he
might not get a similar rank if he stays on earth, and it’s during this
conversation that Nathan realizes that he’s being got rid of and we hear the
first mention of the term “Star Cops” which is definitely meant as a jibe and
not a compliment.
It is also stressed that the
term for life in orbit is “Out there” and not “Up there” – a term that pops up
a lot later in the episode, so wee’d better be paying attention at the back
there.
Anyway, despite the Commander
making himself very clear on the matter, Nathan decides to investigate anyway –
showing just the type of maverick copper he is – and his walk by the murder
pond makes him late for dinner despite “Box…”
Up in space there are a few
more shonky effects shots as Stephenson, the traffic controller (played by
Keith Varnier) makes a few allegedly “witty” racist jibes as his “comrades” and
David carries on checking spacesuits. That’s right. Please note: David is
checking spacesuits.
On earth, because Nathan
insisted, and very much against his own better judgement, Brian makes a very
surprising house call to interview the widow and we discover that the victim
collected clocks and that all of the pocket watch cases in the collection were
empty.
Well done, Brian.
Nathan, meanwhile, has a very
tense dinner with Lee, which at least fills in a lot of his backstory; his dad
used to sell computers which made him aware that machines can’t resist deliberate
sacrifices but less aware that Lee really doesn’t like this restaurant. There’s
a lot of chat about assigning Brian against orders, Nathan’s “instinct for
murder” – episode title alert! – minds being made up, bad jokes, and the fact
that Lee, at least, wants them to settle down to a life of domestic bliss.
Meanwhile, in space, as a
food pack floats dodgily by, more spacesuits are checked. Yes, more spacesuit
checking. Keep up. This might become really important later on.
Nathan then fails to fail his
interview which is an international multi-person video conference call which
must have seemed excitingly possible in 1987 but nowadays just reminds you of
all the tedious mundane management nonsense so many of us sit through on a
daily basis.
How times change. Cutting
edge technology to mundane everyday drudgery in the turn of a tape spool.
Still we like Nathan, even as
he’s being interviewed and we find out more about him. He prefers Sherlock
Holmes to Dan Dare in anticipation of tomorrow’s newspaper reviews, which makes
him a good egg, and so his training begins in anticipation of an
acclimatization visit to high earth orbit.
Next time we see him he’s in
a slightly unconvincing centrifuge thingy of the sort that nearly did for Roger
Moore in Moonraker, and he seems more interested in getting Brian to
investigate the widow’s finances and making grumpy jokes than in anything else
in the training montage.
It won’t be easy… (No, no)
Meanwhile, at the pond, we
see a dog walker who obviously noticed something dodgy afoot to help with
Brian’s investigations…
And so Nathan finally makes
it into space via a shuttle and some upside down revolving camera floating
clipboard jiggery-pokery to convince us of the fact. Despite being horribly
space sick, he sees through the suggestion that Russia’s Service Contract is at
fault – not enough to stop the execution of some poor unfortunate, sadly (well,
perestroika was yet to happen in the real world) – and that there’s more to it.
He suspects a professional “hit” designed to fool the computer whereas his own
technique it is to start from murder and get persuaded otherwise.
Whilst dangling from wires on
his dodgy-looking blue-screen space station tour, it becomes apparent that they
must expect an accident soon.
Later episodes would avoid
the worst aspects of trying to simulate zero gravity by shifting the Star Cops
Headquarters to a moon-base, which meant that it could be, to a certain extent,
ignored for dramatic purposes. Overall, this benefits the series greatly as it
knows its limitations and does its best to avoid the problem of shoddy effects
hiding the damn good stories that they were trying to tell.
Meanwhile, in communication
with earth, Nathan discovers that Brian has found an anomaly, but before anyone
has any time to think, there’s a blue alert and a political bigwig named
Henderson is killed via some shonky SFX, and the whole future of the space
project lies on a knife-edge.
A metaphorical knife-edge,
obviously - not a bloody, dripping, Jack-the-Ripper-y literal one.
That would be far too easy.
Anyway, Nathan finds out that
he’s heading up the investigation via the news and has another shouty meeting
with Moray, before we find David Theroux has been brought down to earth and
Nathan’s apartment, for what he thinks is a telling off of his own, especially
as Nathan is busily inspecting a spacesuit that he has on the floor.
David, you see, sees Nathan
checking a spacesuit and, with all of the spacesuit checking he’s been doiung
himself, his – and perhaps our – minds immediately go to the fact that
someone’s going to take the blame for all this and that someone is very probably
going to be David Theroux.
However, they seem to bond
over old movie quotes and - just to show what sort of a copper he is – it is
Nathan that mentions that the acceptable failure statistics of spacesuits
represent actual people actually dying.
There’s a lot of
investigative discussion asking exactly the sort of questions that the viewer
might have been asking at home in those less passive times; About whether the quality
control is at fault, and whether the failure rate is constant, or if it’s
currently slightly worse. In fact it’s actually better than normal which is why
the computers aren’t being alerted to anything suspicious.
Having not quite ruled out
the possibility of corrupt officials – just to show the kind of cynical copper
he is – he suggests that they start looking for payoffs and clues, and the
upshot of all this is that, whilst David thinks he’s being blamed (Ho! Ho!),
all of the suit checking is really just part of Nathan’s astronaut training programme.
Via “Box” we learn a little
more about the background to the Russians having the service contract and the
so-called “acceptable” 2% error rate, which makes it possible to stage an accident
without alarming the computers, all of which might be a motive if someone else
manages to get the contract.
We cut back to another meal
with Lee in the same dreadful restaurant that she’s already told him she
loathes, but, because Nathan’s been too distracted by his work – because that’s
the kind of dogged, single-minded, see-it-through-to-the-bitter-end copper he
is – he forgot to tell “Box” that Lee doesn’t like the place.
In that relationship, it
seems that he’s forgetting rather a lot – because he’s also forgotten to
mention that he’s made the shortlist for the outer space job - which leads to a
bit of a row which is interrupted by “Box” telling him that he really ought to
switch on the news and, with the exciting thrust of new technology, the waiter
rolls over portable TV set on a sort of sweet trolley so that he can see it
(Ha! Ha!).
What’s less amusing is that a
Russian maintenance operative has been accused of murder by negligence, which
does serve to remind Lee of the real-world consequences of Nathan doing his
job.
Resigned to the fact that her
future plans might be about to suddenly change – but probably not aware of just
how drastically yet – she starts to refer to Nathan as a “Star Cop” to which he
replies with exasperated bonhomie “I am not a star cop – I am a fully trained
spaceman” which does mean that, with an enigmatic “I have to go” – they part on
reasonably friendly terms at least, and Lee’s melancholy farewell words of “Don’t
look down, love” are a surprisingly touching moment amongst all the Sci-Fi
antics.
Back in space the news is all
that the beastly Russians “Will execute” their space engineer, and Nathan and
David find out that “Nothing’s private from your friendly neighbourhood traffic
controller” from Stephenson, who is listening in on their radio transmissions
and sees and hears all.
It might be worth remembering
that, and a very prescient glimpse of the future.
One of the downsides of
resurrecting the old VHS player is that the playing heads started protesting at
having to reuse their gears after all this time, and so, for the rest of the
episode, the soundtrack started to get a little screamy and I thought that the
precious tape was going to snap. Happily we were both able to stagger on to the
end of the programme but it was touch and go there for a while, I can tell you.
When lives start to depend upon technology, it’s wise to remember that when
technology goes wrong, it can go very wrong indeed, and situations can escalate
dramatically
Nathan suggests that they
ought to look into connections, however tenuous they might be, across the whole
of the “out there” community, and find out – where everyone was at time of
deaths and run a computer cross check. He also wants it displayed on all
consoles so that it’s no secret and – just to show the kind of psychologically
understanding sort of copper he is – allow people to find it for themselves.
Then he chooses to deliberately
let out the most secure of secrets – not that he throws up a lot in space –
just to show what sort of vulnerable copper he is - but that he’s planning on
going outside on a spacewalk fairly soon, if any anonymous space assassins
might wish to take a pop at him.
And so, as the rag-tag band
of Star Cops – still seen as one step down from nightclub bouncers on the
crime-solving spectrum remember – attempt to get their suspect list down to a
more manageable length, whilst indulging in more fuzzy-edged Kirby-wire
dangling corridor fun – David has twigged that Nathan has decided to make himself
a target – just to show the kind of brave yet reckless copper he is – and
there’s more bonding over old movie quotes.
With Nathan having left on
his fishing trip, David, realising that his pal Stephenson sees all and knows
all, finally twigs that “Nothing gets past your friendly neighbourhood traffic
controller” and mentions this to his pal - who
suddenly becomes a rather less friendly traffic controller with an “evil
voice” – and someone who, not unreasonably, and by now, maybe not unexpectedly,
pulls a gun on him.
With Nathan alone and outside
in space, with his backup now out of the game, the space-suited assassins move in
to a funky electropop beat.
With David held at gunpoint,
it’s time for some real science to explain that the percussion weapon has reduced
muzzle velocity because firing off guns in such a dangerous environment is
basically a very stupid thing to do. During yet another round of dangling corridor
antics, David seems more concerned that Stephenson and he “were friends” rather
than the whole imminent death thing and, as he is taken to the spacesuit store
to be dressed for his own sudden and unexplained accidental death, one of the
spacesuits that has drifted up to the ceiling in the zero gravity of the space
station springs into life and pounces on the gunman.
Huzzah! Nathan was not killed
by the unidentified space-suited assassins after all – in fact, having drawn
them out into the open, he used a medical laser to zap them both and they are
now floating around outside, hoist by their own Kirby wires.
So Nathan has saved David and
there’s only a little bit more backstory to fill in as we learn that “Box” was
a gift from Nathan’s father as an uncomfortably floaty Nathan hears a news
report stating – as no surprise to any of us really - that he is tipped to be
new commander of the International Space Police Force.
With the case resolved, back
down on Earth, Nathan has taken to wearing a trench-coat, and standing moodily
on location, just to show what kind of a film-noir copper he is.
In a final meeting with
Commander Moray, Nathan states emphatically that he doesn’t want the job, and
Moray - rather unhelpfully - suggests that he could of course retire. The job
he “has” has suddenly become the job he “had” as Brian Lincoln has been far too
impressive in solving the drowning case – it was the wife wotdunnit – and has
been given Nathan’s job.
Moray is impressed that
Lincoln went on with case despite being told not to even though, irony of
ironies, we all know it was down to Nathan’s insisting in carrying on long
after Brian wanted to close the book on the whole thing. (Ha! Ha!)
Grumpily, and resigned to his
new fate, Nathan nvites his former boss to visit him in space, and it look as
if he’s not going to have an easy time of it as Moray gleefully informs him
that there are rumours that the poor Russian has already been executed so they
are not happy and that, because a Brit has been chosen over their guy, the Americans
are not happy with his appointment either.
And so, an impressive first
episode ends with Nathan suggesting that he may be the wrong man for the job.
It won’t be easy…
With it’s unique selling point
and its rather clever and philosophical style of storytelling, Star Cops really
deserved to get a longer run. Sadly, this was not to be. Several production
problems and a ridiculously stupid timeslot pretty much doomed the entire
project to low ratings, and convinced more than one bigwig at the BBC that
Science-Fiction for television was – ironically - dead in the water.
After nine episodes - with a
planned tenth cancelled due to strike action - the plug was pulled, and Nathan
and his team were never seen on our televisions again, which is rather a pity.
Some of the episodes – most notably “Intelligent Listening For Beginners” and
“This Case To Be Opened In A Million Years” were almost astonishingly good - despite
everything suggesting that they really ought not to be, given that it was a
studio-bound production and made by the BBC in those pre-CGI days that
occasionally caused things to slip dangerously towards parody or embarrassment.
Rewatching that first episode
again now, even with the screaming limitations of my own viewing equipment, I
also rather enjoyed the downbeat – perhaps deliberately Philip Marlowe-esque - mood
to the episode. This was Film – well Telly - Noir in a Science Fiction setting,
and that really is not a bad thing.
So Hurrah for Star Cops –
quite possibly the smartest, cleverest and most “out there” Science-Fiction
Detective series that too few people remember.
Now… Anyone for Mars…?
